Political Capital » George W. Bushhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital
Politics blog featuring the latest news and analysis from Washington and the US. Political editors provide insights & data about today’s politics.Thu, 07 Aug 2014 19:48:32 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2Bush: ‘Taking Care of Women… Good Politics’http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-06/bush-taking-care-women-good-politics/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-06/bush-taking-care-women-good-politics/#commentsWed, 06 Aug 2014 15:19:56 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=137483“A generation on the verge of being lost has been found,” former President George W. Bush said today of a U.S.-led initiative in Africa that has spanned two administrations — his and President Barack Obama’s. About nine million people are being treated for AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, the former president noted today at a forum […]

Former US President George W. Bush (C) stands with Penehupifo Pohamba (L), first lady of Namibia, and Roman Tesfaye, first lady of Ethiopia, after announcing partnerships between their nations and Pink Ribbon, Red Ribbon during the US – Africa Leaders Summit at the Kennedy Center on Aug. 6, 2014 in Washington, DC.

“A generation on the verge of being lost has been found,” former President George W. Bush said today of a U.S.-led initiative in Africa that has spanned two administrations — his and President Barack Obama’s.

About nine million people are being treated for AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, the former president noted today at a forum of the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington.

Bush launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which since 2004 has funneled more than $50 billion into the fight. The campaign has been widened to include screenings for breast and cervical cancer, Bush noted.

In an unusual appearance in Washington today, Bush forecast the “the beginning of the end of AIDS,” highlighting the need to increase public health efforts to fight breast and cervical cancers in Africa.

“This fatal link between HIV and cervical cancer can be broken and it is our job to break it,” said Bush, in his speech at the Kennedy Center. “People living with AIDS should not be die from preventable treatable diseases.”

Bush, who made fighting AIDS a top priority in his second term, joined with Michelle Obama’s office to sponsor a day-long summit on health and education issues for African first ladies in Washington for the U.S.-Africa Leaders summit. Since leaving office, he’s focused on fighting breast and cervical cancer, the top killer of African women.

He announced today that his public health organization, Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, which screens women for cancer in three African nations, would be establishing new programs in Ethiopia and Namibia.

Bush spoke fondly of the welcome that he and his wife have found, in particular, in Zambia as they have continued to visit. “Besides dancing with the women, here’s what I remember most,” he joked. “By the way, it was forgettable dancing.”

“By the way,” Bush told the first ladies of African heads of state assembled today. “If you’re worried about your husband’s future, taking care of women is good politics.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-06/bush-taking-care-women-good-politics/feed/0James Brady Rememberedhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-04/james-brady-remembered/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-04/james-brady-remembered/#commentsMon, 04 Aug 2014 19:15:52 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=137293James Brady died today. He was 73. Thirty-three years and then some since he was grievously wounded, on March 30, 1981, in an assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan, whom Brady had served as press secretary only since January, he passed away in Alexandria, Virginia. Here James Brady (1940-2014) w Ronald Reagan at Blair House […]

Thirty-three years and then some since he was grievously wounded, on March 30, 1981, in an assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan, whom Brady had served as press secretary only since January, he passed away in Alexandria, Virginia.

The shootings gave rise to a family cause, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, with his wife Sarah, and eventually a new law, the “Brady Handgun Violence Protection Act,” signed by President Bill Clinton on Nov. 30, 1993. “The enactment of the Brady law changed the existing “lie-and-buy” system to a “background check-then-buy” system by requiring that every sale of a gun by a licensed dealer be referred to law enforcement for a background check,” the center says.

“Jim was the personification of courage and perseverance,” says Mrs Reagan in a statement on Brady.. “He and Sarah never gave up,” she says.

The background checks themselves have been streamlined to a nearly instantaneous screening by phone and computers. CNN explains: “Once you have decided to purchase a gun from a retail outlet — it could be a local gun shop or national chain such as Bass Pro Shops, Cabelas or Walmart — the store enters your name and information into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, via a toll-free number or the Internet, to check the eligibility of the buyer.”

Following the December 2012 killing of 20 schoolchildren and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, the White House of President Barack Obama initiated a push for several additional gun-safety measures. A couple of senators, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, offered a bipartisan plan to expand background checks to include firearms purchased at a gun show or on the Internet. The bill failed for lack of support in the Senate.

“Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?” he asked. “I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer’s no. We’re not doing enough.”

(Updated at 4:20 pm EDT: )

Yet in remarking on Brady’s passing in a statement issued by the White House today, Obama noted the benefit of the 2 million firearms which have been kept out of criminal hands thanks to the Brady Act:

“ Jim is a legend at the White House for his warmth and professionalism as press secretary for President Reagan, for the strength he brought to bear in recovering from the shooting that nearly killed him 33 years ago; and for turning the events of that terrible afternoon into a remarkable legacy of service through the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violenc,” Obama said. “Since 1993, the law that bears Jim’s name has kept guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals. An untold number of people are alive today who otherwise wouldn’t be, thanks to Jim.”

As in many public shootings, John Hinckley’s shots at Reagan and Brady revealed a deeply disturbed perpetrator. Found not guilty by reason of insanity, he has spent decades at a Washington mental hospital, though in recent years has been granted lengthened visits to his mother’s home in Williamsburg, Virginia. The deranged Newtown shooter, Adam Lanza, killed his mother and himself.

On this day in 1981, Pres. Reagan & 3 others (including Press Secretary James Brady) were shot by John Hinckley, Jr. http://t.co/2A0WzocZnT

Much has been in made, in the unending debate over gun control, about the underlying problem of mental health — yet nothing of great substance has been done about that, or the connection between mental stability and access to firearms.

Today, the press briefing room where the president meets the press is named for the late James Brady. That honor occurred on President George W. Bush’s watch when the room was remodeled at great public expense. On Obama’s watch, Brady returned there to see what was built in his name — wheeled into the room, he had struggled with lifelong impairment from the bullet through his brain.

Jim Brady was known affectionately among WH staffers as “the bear.” On a return visit to the WH, staffers wore “The Bear Is Back” buttons.

Yet the threat to the presidency and public alike from unspeakable gun violence is no less than it was in March of 1981. A virtual army of Secret Service protection has amassed around the president, but not the public.

All 3 broadcast networks wrongly reported that James Brady had died in the immediate aftermath of the 1981 shooting. http://t.co/YdkMWmzOVP

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-08-04/james-brady-remembered/feed/0Sticks and Stones: Lerner’s Permithttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-30/sticks-stones-lerners-permit/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-30/sticks-stones-lerners-permit/#commentsWed, 30 Jul 2014 19:01:52 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=136975Not since George W. Bush called a reporter one has the word ricocheted around the Internet so loudly. Lois Lerner, it turns out, had some harsh words about conservatives in government emails that the House Ways and Means Committee has turned up in its probe of the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of political groups’ tax-exempt […]

Lois Lerner, the director of the Internal Revenue Service’s (exempt organizations office, during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on May 22, 2013.

Not since George W. Bush called a reporter one has the word ricocheted around the Internet so loudly.

Lois Lerner, it turns out, had some harsh words about conservatives in government emails that the House Ways and Means Committee has turned up in its probe of the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of political groups’ tax-exempt status. The former IRS official in charge of that section has pleaded the Fifth Amendment, and the agency says her emails have been destroyed.

Rep. Dave Camp, the Republican chairman of the committee, reports on a “newly discovered email exchange” from Lerner’s official IRS BlackBerry account on Nov. 9, 2012. In a letter to the attorney general today, Camp writes of “Ms. Lerner’s deep animus towards conservatives, which she refers to as `—holes.’

Camp concludes in his letter that Lerner’s agency’s “mistreatment of conservative groups was driven by her personal hostility” toward conservatives.

“You should hear the whacko wing of the GOP,” an associate wrote to Lerner from an account outside the agency. “The right wing radio shows are scary to listen to.”

Lerner replied: “Great. Maybe we are through if there are that many —holes.”

“And I’m talking about the hosts of the shows,” the associate replied. “The callers are rabid.”

“So we don’t need to worry about alien teRrorists, ” Lerner replied, as Camp detailed in his letter to Justice. “It’s our own crazies that will take us down.”

During its inquiry, Camp writes, the committee found that Lerner “personally directed the denial of an application for exempt status and subjected Crossroads GPS to an audit.” In a letter about the Organizing for Action committee supporting the president’s reelection, Camp reports, Lerner wrote, “Oh — maybe I can get the DC office job!”

It was back in 2000, during a Labor Day weekend rally in Illinois, that presidential nominee George W. Bush spotted a veteran political reporter in the crowd and — in a moment caught by a hot microphone — told running mate Dick Cheney that the reporter is a “major-league —hole.” Cheney replied: “Oh yeah, he is, big-time.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-30/sticks-stones-lerners-permit/feed/0Oscar: ‘What First Ladies Should Wear’http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-26/oscar-first-ladies-wear/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-26/oscar-first-ladies-wear/#commentsSat, 26 Jul 2014 14:02:30 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=136683The George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas is looking a little more glam thanks to Oscar de la Renta, the fashion designer whose gowns have been worn by many first ladies and movie stars over the decades. “Oscar de la Renta: Five Decades of Style” opened last weekend and features original designs worn by […]

]]>The George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas is looking a little more glam thanks to Oscar de la Renta, the fashion designer whose gowns have been worn by many first ladies and movie stars over the decades.

“Oscar de la Renta: Five Decades of Style” opened last weekend and features original designs worn by Laura Bush, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan.

When Bush twin Jenna married Henry Hager in 2008, she wore a custom de la Renta-designed dress, and the mother of the bride was wearing Oscar too.

The exhibition makes the case that “Oscar,” as he is known in fashion circles, knows how to make a lady feel like a grande dame, even a queen. And what a way to celebrate: The designer had a birthday this week, July 22.

In one of the exhibition’s photos, Laura Bush stands regally on the White House lawn, hand on hip, in crimson de la Renta, her adoring Scottish terriers at her feet.

Laura Bush saw the exhibition, which debuted last year at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, last week, and reflected on her wardrobe choices.

“When you are first lady,” she told the Dallas media, “there are certain fashion rules — unspoken or unwritten, but you’re aware of them always.” A first lady, she said, must look “appropriate” at all times, “lovely but not too flamboyant.”

“Oscar knows what first ladies should wear and what would look good on them, but he also knows what would be the most appropriate and the most dignified and the most elegant. And he knows the way anyone would want the first lady of our country to be seen.”

The white suit she wore for her husband’s second Inauguration Day in 2009 remains a favorite, she said.

“People gasped when I walked out. And, of course, that’s really what you want when your husband is the one being inaugurated. You want people to think that what you have on is terrific.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-26/oscar-first-ladies-wear/feed/02016: The Competency Electionhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-25/2016-competency-election/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-25/2016-competency-election/#commentsFri, 25 Jul 2014 13:27:34 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=136609If 2000 was the decency election, and 2008 the change election, 2016 could become the competency election. If each presidential election for an open White House offers the American public a new course — specifically in reaction to the most troubling aspects of the departing chief executive — the dysfunction that prevails in Washington today […]

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden in Washington on April 2, 2013.

If 2000 was the decency election, and 2008 the change election, 2016 could become the competency election.

If each presidential election for an open White House offers the American public a new course — specifically in reaction to the most troubling aspects of the departing chief executive — the dysfunction that prevails in Washington today could become the catalyst for election of the next president.

In 2000, Republican George W. Bush campaigned with a pledge to restore dignity to an office that had been tarnished by Bill Clinton’s sexual escapade with an intern, an affair that led to impeachment though not removal from office. In 2008, Democrat Barack Obama campaigned with a promise of hope and change, and a pledge to end the U.S.-led war in Iraq, capitalizing on the public’s disillusionment with both that war and the president who put the nation in it.

In 2016, after what could be several years of inaction on some of the biggest problems facing the nation — ranging from immigration to tax reform, and stagnant educational and employment opportunities — the table will be set for a leader with a menu of plans and the mettle for executing them.

In a recent Pew Research Center poll, 54 percent of those surveyed said Obama cares about them and most called him trustworthy. Yet 53 percent said he cannot get things done — only 44 percent said yes, he can.

This is not as dim as the perception the public held of Bush at a similar juncture, in the summer of 2006, following the government’s mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina, when just 41 percent said he cared about people like him and the same number deemed him trustworthy. After his failed pitch to privatize much of Social Security at the start of his second term, a majority, 51 percent, also said he was not able to get things done.

If Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016, she will be campaigning with a resume, a former senator from New York and secretary of state for the first half of Obama’s presidency who knows her way around Washington — after her bruising and losing battle for her husband’s health care reforms in the 1990s — and on the world stage.

“… In the book when you’re describing your role as secretary of state: It includes the policy element, but it also involves being the C.E.O. of the big, vast State Department apparatus,” the interviewer asked her. “Every four years when people run for president, governors say, `You ought to elect a governor because we’ve run things, we know how to manage.’ Are part of the problems we’re now seeing in the Obama administration, both in foreign policy and domestically, a function of the fact that their leading figures, President Obama, Joe Biden, you as secretary of state, were legislators who came out of the Senate and not people who had run things before?”

“Oh,” Clinton said, “you don’t expect me to agree with that, do you? Look, I think it depends on the individual. I had serious disagreements with George Bush and he was a two-term governor.”

“But is there a management deficit in this administration?” Harwood asked Clinton.

“I think there is a political deficit in Washington because of gridlock and opposition to the president that started the first day he went into office,” she replied. “And I find that so regrettable. I don’t want to sound naive or Pollyanna-ish about it, but I think we’ve got two big crises in our country. One of them is the economic crisis, which we all know has just dramatically increased inequality and stagnated middle-class incomes and outcomes. But we also have a political crisis. Our democracy is not working and I do not see how we’re going to resolve a lot of our issues. If you look at the reforms our president has put forward time and time again that would make the government more manageable, move it into the 21st century, they’re just met by a solid wall of resistance.”

Which returns us to the question of who might have a plan, and the toolkit, for breaking that “wall of resistance.”

If Clinton doesn’t run, Vice President Joe Biden surely will — as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, has put it, “in a New York minute.” With more than three decades in the Senate, Biden has run for president twice.

“I think Joe would be a superb president,” Obama told Evan Osnos, for a probing profile of “The Full Biden” that The New Yorker has published. “He has seen the job up close, he knows what the job entails. He understands how to separate what’s really important from what’s less important. I think he’s got great people skills. He enjoys politics, and he’s got important relationships up on the Hill that would serve him well.”

A lot of these attributes may sound to some like skills for the next president that Obama himself has been faulted for lacking — discerning the big issues from the small, lighting to the political fray and prevailing among people barring his or her way, possessing the skills on the Hill that make legislation possible. They are some of the skills that anyone who meets the competency test in 2016 will probably have to demonstrate. The public will probably want a plan as well.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-25/2016-competency-election/feed/0Putin’s Popularity Peakinghttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-18/putins-popularity-peaking/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-18/putins-popularity-peaking/#commentsFri, 18 Jul 2014 15:29:10 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=136057For all the trouble that Russia’s incursion into Ukraine has caused in Europe and the United States, for all the sanctions that European Union and U.S. allies have imposed on Russian business interests, Russian President Vladimir Putin is as popular as he’s ever been back home. Putin’s approval rating stood at 83 percent in Gallup polling […]

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives for the Orthodox festival to honor the birthday of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh in the Trinity Lavra of St.Sergius on July 18, 2014, near Moscow.

For all the trouble that Russia’s incursion into Ukraine has caused in Europe and the United States, for all the sanctions that European Union and U.S. allies have imposed on Russian business interests, Russian President Vladimir Putin is as popular as he’s ever been back home.

His approval had soared by almost 30 percentage points from just last year.

Granted, this measure was taken before a Malaysian airliner was “blown out of the sky” over Ukraine this week, as Vice President Joe Biden put it. Early indications point to Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine, a conflict that Putin has stoked.

Yet it’s a measure of how much nationalism can play into a public’s opinion of their leader. During his time as president and prime minister and president again, Putin’s approval rating had reached 83 percent in 2008 and slid steadily through the following years until its slump at 54 percent in 2013 — a “slump” that President Barack Obama, scoring in the low 40’s lately in the U.S., might like to have.

It’s reminiscent of the 90 percent public approval that former President George W. Bush scored in the weeks following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when the nation rallied around a leader after a deadly assault on the homeland.

The Russian taking of Crimea may have inflamed tensions among Russia and Europe and the U.S., yet it rebuilt the Russian public’s sense of world power.

They’re still not sure about those elections, however:

“The 29-percentage-point increase in Putin’s job approval between 2013 and 2014 suggests he has solidified his previously shaky support base,” Gallup’s Julie Ray and Neli Esipova write. “For the first time since 2008, a majority of Russians (73%) believe their country’s leadership is leading them in the right direction. This renewed faith is apparent in their record-level confidence in the country’s military (78%), their national government (64%), and honesty of elections (39%).”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-18/putins-popularity-peaking/feed/0Rubio vs. Bush: ‘Immigration Wars’http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-13/rubio-vs-bush-border-wars/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-13/rubio-vs-bush-border-wars/#commentsSun, 13 Jul 2014 18:49:39 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=135647The humanitarian crisis that has emerged at the Southwestern U.S. border — a reflection of a refugee tide emanating from Central America more than any distinct border problem — has tested everyone’s stance on the broader question of a path forward for American immigration policy. It’s also testing the readiness of Republicans to take a […]

]]>The humanitarian crisis that has emerged at the Southwestern U.S. border — a reflection of a refugee tide emanating from Central America more than any distinct border problem — has tested everyone’s stance on the broader question of a path forward for American immigration policy.

It’s also testing the readiness of Republicans to take a stand on an issue certain to play a central role in the presidential election campaign of 2016 — particularly in the party’s primary contests. It’s a good bet that Congress will do nothing substantive about the “comprehensive immigration reform” that leaders of both parties have sought — starting with President Barack Obama and including the bipartisan coalition in the Senate that produced a bill last year.

Which points to a couple of Republicans who probably know the issue better than anyone within their party who might be viewed as potential candidates for president in 2016. One of them is speaking out, and the other is not.

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the Miami-born son of Cuban immigrants, was among those who won passage of a bill offering not only stronger control of the border, but also an overhaul of antiquated visa laws and a pathway to citizenship for an estimated 11-12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the United States. His advocacy for that bill was said to cost him among the base of his party that views the citizenship question as a mater of amnesty. Yet today, as he works to rebuild support for a possible run for president, he points to the existing problem along the border as proof of the necessity of that Senate bill.

“It’s a perfect storm of three things,” Rubio said of the situation this week in an appearance on the FOX News affiliate in Orlando. It’s a combination of an insecure border, particularly in Texas, traffickers taking advantage of refugees and an unfounded impression that there is a law in the U.S. that will allow these refugees to stay he said. Most of them will have to be returned to their home countries, he said.

“Let’s not just throw $3.7 billion at this problem,” Rubio said of the supplemental bill that Obama has proposed. “Let’s put in place permanent border security measures… Let’s deal with this issue… once and for all,” he said. If so, he said, “we’d be able to settle the rest of the problem, which includes the people here now….. If we did that, i think you actually create an environment where you can deal with immigration in its entirety in the future, and that includes modernizing the legal system and dealing with 12 million people who are here illegally now.

Jeb Bush, former two-term governor of Florida and Texas-born son of one president and brother of another whose own children are U.S.-born Mexican-American, co-authored a book last year about the “immigration wars” that also supported the comprehensive reform the Senate was promoting — yet stopped short of citizenship, suggesting that some form of legal status for the undocumented would be preferable if the country is committed to averting another uncontrolled influx.

At the same time, he has revealed that compassionate conservative streak in the Bush family — Brother George W. Bush, who also promoted a comprehensive immigration reform, liked to say that family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande. For those crossing in pursuit of a better life for their families, Jeb Bush has said, it’s “an act of love.” That would appear to be truer than ever today, in the light of families handling their children over to smugglers for fear of the criminal gangs threatening their existence in Honduras and Guatemala. That went over with the base for him about as well as the bill did for Rubio.

Yet, as he privately weighs the possibility of a campaign for president, we haven’t heard much lately from the former governor on the question at hand.

On Twitter, Bush has picked up on some of the recent essays that criticize Obama for lack of leadership in general — this includes one by Peggy Noonan taking the president to task in the current crisis, which could be read as an indirect comment on Bush’s part (or employing Noonan’s commentary as a political shield. Noonan said this about Obama’s avoidance of the border last week as he traveled across Texas for midterm election campaign fundraisers: “Give the president points for honesty. He doesn’t want to enact an `I care and am aware’ photo-op. He will pay a political price, but it is clearly a price he is willing to pay. He never has to face a voter again.”

This is a good piece by Peggy Noonan. It’s time to stop blaming and start leading, Mr. President. http://t.co/Cz3TjypEg5

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, another Floridian who knows the issue first-hand, a Florida-born son of Cuban immigrants, worked with a bipartisan group in the House to produce something compatible with what the Senate was producing. His years-long effort was abandoned by House leaders this year.

“My solution would require those who came here illegally to earn legal status, earn their right to remain here, and demonstrate their commitment to the United States,” the congressman said last week. “It is an efficient and effective approach that is good for the American economy and fair to the people who came here legally… This system is not going to fix itself, and delaying a commonsense solution is only going to make matters worse as is evident by what is going on today with the crisis on the southern border.”

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-13/rubio-vs-bush-border-wars/feed/0Perry-Obama: Meeting, Yet Not of Mindshttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-08/perry-obama-meeting-minds/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-08/perry-obama-meeting-minds/#commentsTue, 08 Jul 2014 14:36:16 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=135169Updated at 2:45 pm EDT President Barack Obama is open to meeting with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. And vice versa. “The president would welcome a meeting with you while he is in Texas,” senior adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote to the Republican governor yesterday. Perry, who has passed up an opportunity to welcome the president on […]

President Barack Obama is open to meeting with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. And vice versa.

“The president would welcome a meeting with you while he is in Texas,” senior adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote to the Republican governor yesterday.

Perry, who has passed up an opportunity to welcome the president on the tarmac when he lands in Dallas for some Democratic Party fundraisers on Wednesday — before heading on to Austin for more fundraising — had suggested Obama seek a different destination. Texas lawmakers have written their own letters of invitation to the White House.

The Austin American-Statesman has reported that Perry wanted a private meeting with the president on the surge of tens of thousands of children, mainly from Central America, crossing the U.S. border. But he wasn’t accepting the president’s invitation to a round-table talk in Dallas — at first, that is. And it seems the invitation was reversed in the acceptance.

“Governor Perry is pleased that President Obama has accepted his invitation to discuss the humanitarian and national security crises along our southern border, and he looks forward to meeting with the president tomorrow,” Lucy Nashed, a Perry spokeswoman, told Bloomberg News in an e-mail.

“More than 52,000 unaccompanied children arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border from Oct. 1 through June 15, about double the total in a similar period a year,” as Roger Runningen reports. Obama will be asking Congress today to approve almost $4 billion to contain the surge of illegal Central American migrants entering the U.S.

Perry, who made a run at the Republican nomination for president in 2012 and is eyeing another bid as he prepares to step aside as governor at year’s end, has questioned the president’s commitment to the problem.

“I don’t believe he particularly cares whether or not the border of the United States is secure,” Perry said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” calling Obama either “inept” or had an “ulterior motive” in failing to secure the border.

Texas Rep. Blake Farenthold, no fan of the president’s, suggests that the border crisis is “Obama’s Katrina” — thousands of people holed up in over-stressed emergency quarters. It was former President George W. Bush who traveled to the West Coast initially following the onslaught of Katrina on the Gulf Coast, only to peer at the damage from a flyover of Air Force One en route home to Washington. He flew to the area days later for a tour, complimenting then FEMA chief Michael Brown for a “heckuva job.”

The letter to Perry from the White House last night advised Perry that Obama would welcome a meeting planned with faith leaders and local elected officials in Dallas on Wednesday. Jarrett noted that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has been to the border five times and plans a return trip Friday. It noted the White House and Cabinet officials who have accompanied him.
Obama and Perry will join faith leaders and state and local officials tomorrow in Dallas to discuss the migrant crisis on the border and how best to contain it. Obama will be on a three-day fundraising trip for Democrats in Colorado and Texas yet still has no plans to visit the border, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-08/perry-obama-meeting-minds/feed/0Obama ‘Worst’ Since WW II: Pollhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-02/obama-worst-since-ww-ii-poll/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-02/obama-worst-since-ww-ii-poll/#commentsWed, 02 Jul 2014 14:28:40 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=134829It’s widely recognized, at this point, that President Barack Obama’s public approval ratings are in a slump. His job approval stands at 41 percent in the latest Gallup track (with 53 percent disapproval, a phenomenon colloquially known as “underwater.”) He has stood lower — at 38 percent in Gallup’s tracking in the summer and again […]

It’s widely recognized, at this point, that President Barack Obama’s public approval ratings are in a slump.

His job approval stands at 41 percent in the latest Gallup track (with 53 percent disapproval, a phenomenon colloquially known as “underwater.”) He has stood lower — at 38 percent in Gallup’s tracking in the summer and again fall of 2011.)

Yet, the worst American president since World War II?

That’s what 33 percent of the voters surveyed by the Quinnipiac University National Poll say. Another 28 percent named former President George W. Bush.

Furthermore, 45 percent of those surveyed say the country would be better off if Republican Mitt Romney had won the 2012 presidential election.

Dig a little deeper and here are a few more twists:

While the greatest number of those surveyed name Obama as the worst commander-in-chief since World War II, the respondents are statistically divided over who was worse, Obama or Bush. And it is, after all, one third of those surveyed. Combined, nearly two thirds identify two presidents.

It’s the Republicans surveyed who really skew the numbers against Obama in the Quinnipiac contest: 63 percent of Republicans surveyed naming him as the worst, while just 4 percent of Democrats say so. Similarly, 28 percent of Democrats surveyed picked Bush as the worst, and 5 percent of Republicans did.

Richard Nixon, who resigned in the face of impeachment, was named by just 13 percent overall — making him a distant third-worst behind Obama and Bush in the survey. All of the other nine presidents were flunked by just single-digit shares of those surveyed — which suggests that history has a way of healing any bad feelings about anyone.

Which all adds up to one fact:

The share of those saying Romney would have made a better president is smaller than the percentage of Americans who actually voted for him in 2012. The percentage of voters calling Obama the worst president is significantly smaller than the number who say they disapprove of the job he is performing.

In other words, there is within any of these polls a share of voters who don’t like the president. Give them a list of modern-day presidents, and they’ll put him atop the ranking of the worst leaders. And partisans line up in numbers guaranteed to accentuate the criticism for any one leader.

What is more relevant than this contest among presidents living and dead is the actual standing of the chief executive holding the office today.

Obama has his work cut out for him.

“Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies, President Barack Obama finds himself with President George W. Bush at the bottom of the popularity barrel,” says Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement accompanying the poll report.

And that poses a distinct political problem for a president facing a recalcitrant Congress heading into the final two years of his term.

“Sue me,” the president said publicly yesterday, alluding to House Speaker John Boehner’s threat to sue the president for his perceived overuse of executive powers at a time of congressional inaction. Not an auspicious start to a summer of public polling on either centers of power.

]]>http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-07-02/obama-worst-since-ww-ii-poll/feed/0As Iraq Reels, War’s Fathers Mumhttp://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-06-12/iraq-reels-wars-fathers-silent/
http://go.bloomberg.com/political-capital/2014-06-12/iraq-reels-wars-fathers-silent/#commentsThu, 12 Jun 2014 23:05:35 +0000http://blogs.edit.bloomberg.com/political-capital/?p=133523With Iraq under siege from Islamic militants bent on creating a Caliphate that includes areas of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon, U.S. policy has come under fire. Critics are demanding that President Barack Obama fire his national security team. Analysts are questioning U.S. support for President Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq. Lawmakers are calling for the […]

]]>With Iraq under siege from Islamic militants bent on creating a Caliphate that includes areas of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon, U.S. policy has come under fire.

Critics are demanding that President Barack Obama fire his national security team. Analysts are questioning U.S. support for President Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq. Lawmakers are calling for the U.S. to leave Iraq to its own devices or step up its help.

One group has been notably quiet: The architects and cheerleaders of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq who served under President George W. Bush or promoted his administration’s causus belli in the media have been virtually silent on Iraq’s possible disintegration.

The war cost at least 4,490 Americans their lives, according to the Defense Department, and cost American taxpayers more than $2 trillion. In the U.S., the war has created a legacy of suicide, broken families and post-traumatic stress disorder. In Iraq, the best casualty estimates exceed 125,000, and the damage continues today, as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant chews through northern Iraq, ever closer to Baghdad.

Yet a quick tour through social media and websites shows that the last thing former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had to say was on June 6, when he wrote about D-Day for the Wall Street Journal.

Douglas Feith, Bush’s under-secretary of defense for policy, offered his thoughts about “The Temptation of Vladimir Putin” through the Wall Street Journal on March 5. It is available on his eponymous website which has a link to “Iraq War-Related Intelligence Matters” that features nothing newer than a Defense Department inspector general report from 2007.

Richard Perle, chairman of Bush’s Defense Policy Board, last wrote in April for the American Enterprise Institute, where he serves as a fellow, about “Leadership as a last resort,” a critique of Obama’s foreign policy. It mentions Obama’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq only to note it as a lonely reference to foreign policy in the president’s first inauguration.

Former New York Times journalist Judith Miller, whose stories fed the push to war and were based on faulty information leaked by Bush administration officials, also is silent. Now an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and commentator at Fox News, the last article Miller posted on her website is about terrorism in the Middle East as it relates to Egypt.

John Bolton, Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, is an exception, appearing on Fox News radio today to say that it is only a matter of time before Iraq falls into terrorist hands, an outcome “directly attributable to the withdrawal of American forces.”

Donald Rumsfeld, who hasn’t had much of a public presence since resigning as defense secretary in 2006, was asking aides to look for evidence of Iraq’s involvement on the afternoon of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Pithy and charismatic, Rumsfeld might be best known for an answer when questioned about evidence for his claim that Iraq was supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups. He posited that “there are known knowns” as well as known unknowns and finally “unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”

That quote is missing from the website that promotes his book ,“Rumsfeld’s Rules.” The most prominent text there is given over to a quote that sounds almost like the wisdom of hindsight. It says, “Learn to say `I don’t know.’ If used when appropriate, it will be used often.”